الصفحة 1
الصفحة 1
Meaning and Use
The second Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter was held in Jerusalem on April 25-28, 1976, The topic of the symposiumwas Meaning and Use. For Bar-Hillel, the question 'meaning or use?' was of great importance, one which he took as a question of priorities. Which approach to natural language is prior: the formal, semantical approach, which accords a central position to the truth functional concept of meaning and to the theory of reference, or rather the alternative approach which accords the central position to linguistic commu nication and prefers dealing with speech acts to dealing with Statements? Bar Hillel's answer to this question, in his later years, can be summed up by our title, meaning and use: neither approach deserves priority, each is equally necessary, and they both complement each other.
Handbook of philosophical logic ; Vol. 14
I would like to take this opportunity to put forward my current views about logic in computer science, computational linguistics and arti?cial intelligence. In the early 1980s the perception of the role of logic in computer science was that of a speci?cation and reasoning tool and that of a basis for possibly neat computer languages. The computer scientist was manipulating data structures and the use of logic was one of his options.
Game-Theoretical Semantics : Essays on Semantics by Hintikka, Carlson, Peacocke, Rantala and Saarinen
This book is a collection of studies applying game-theoretical concepts and ideas to analysing the semantics of natural language and some formal languages. The bulk of the book consists of several papers by Hintikka, Carlson and Saarinen and discusses several of the central problems of the semantics of natural language.The topics covered are the semantics of natural language quantifiers, conditionals, pronouns and anaphora more generally. Hintikka’s famous essay presenting examples of "branching quantifier structures" in English, as well as one formulating his "any-every thesis", are included. The book also includes Hintikka’s closely argued philosophical discussion of the relationships between the new semantical games with the language games of Wittgenstein.
Fuzzy Quantifiers : A Computational Theory
Almost all", "many", "some": fuzzy quantifiers are vital for effective communication in natural language (NL). This monograph pursues an axiomatic method to achieve a reliable interpretation of these quantifiers in technical applications of fuzzy quantification. Unlike existing work in this area, it targets a much broader class of quantificational phenomena which includes all cases usually considered in linguistics. The topics addressed in the monograph run the gamut from the introduction of the theoretical framework for analysing fuzzy quantification, the formalization of semantical requirements on models of fuzzy quantification, the construction and detailed study of prototypical models which conform to the linguistic desiderata, the development of algorithms for implementing the main types of quantifiers in these models, and finally a preview to fuzzy branching quantifications which might be necessary for modelling NL sentences involving more than one quantifier.
Finite Model Theory ; 2nd ed.
The book presents the main results of descriptive complexity theory, that is, the connections between axiomatizability of classes of finite structures and their complexity with respect to time and space bounds. The logics that are important in this context include fixed-point logics, transitive closure logics, and also certain infinitary languages; their model theory is studied in full detail. Other topics include DATALOG languages, quantifiers and oracles, 0-1 laws, and optimization and approximation problems. The book is written in such a way that the respective parts on model theory and descriptive complexity theory may be read independently. This second edition is a thoroughly revised and enlarged version of the original text.
Existence: Semantics and Syntax
This collection is an important contribution to the semantic and syntactic analysis of the expression of existence. The volume focuses on the three main linguistic constructions expressing existence: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)definiteness. The papers analyze the interaction between the basic notion of existence and pervasive phenomena of natural language, such as quantification and presupposition. The contributions represent state of the art research on theoretical and comparative issues related to the expression of existence, and make extensive reference to the semantic and syntactic facts of English and of various other languages. The richness of new data and the juxtaposition of different theoretical stances bring a number of new questions into focus.
Event Structure and the Left Periphery : Studies on Hungarian
This book provides substantial new results in a novel field of research examining the syntactic and semantic consequences of event structure. The studies of this volume examine the hypothesis that event structure correlates with word order, the presence or absence of the verbal particle, the [+/- specific] feature of the internal argument, aspect, focusing, negation, and negative quantification, among others. The results reported concern the telicising vs. perfectivizing role of the verbal particle; the syntactic and semantic differences of verbs denoting a delimited change, and those denoting creation or coming into being; evidence of viewpoint aspect in a language with no morphological viewpoint marking; the aspectual role of non-thematic objects; the source of the ‘exhaustive identification’ function of structural focus; the interaction of negation and aspect etc.
Mass Terms : Some Philosophical Problems
MASS TERMS, COUNT TERMS, AND SORTAL TERMS Central examples of mass terms are easy to come by. 'Water', 'smoke', 'gold', etc. , differ in their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from count terms such as 'man', 'star', 'wastebasket', etc. Syntactically, it seems, mass terms do, but singular count terms do not, admit the quantifier phrases 'much', 'an amount of', 'a little', etc. The typical indefinite article for them is 'some' (unstressed)!, and this article cannot be used with singular count terms. Count terms, but not mass terms, use the quantifiers 'each', 'every', 'some', 'few', 'many'; and they use 'a(n)' as the indefinite article. They can, unlike the mass terms, take numerals as prefixes.
Anaphora and Type Logical Grammar
This book develops a hybrid architecture that allows to incorporate anaphora resolution into grammatical deduction while avoiding these consequences. To this end, the grammar logic is enriched with a connective that specifically deals with anaphora.After giving a self-contained introduction into Type Logical Grammar in general, the book discusses the formal properties of this connective. In the sequel, Jäger applies this machinery to numerous linguistic phenomena pertaining to the interaction of pronominal anaphora, VP ellipsis and quantification. In the final chapter, the framework is extended to indefiniteness, specificity and sluicing.
